Ferondo Is Drugged and Made to Appear Dead

Lauretta’s tale of Ferondo being drugged and made to appear dead turns a counterfeit death into the abbot’s instrument of deception: Ferondo is buried as though lifeless, while the abbot uses his absence to pursue his wife. The episode begins with a worldly appetite hidden behind a reputation for holiness, and its decisive trick depends on making an ordinary, living man seem beyond the reach of the living.

Setting and the Abbot’s Concealed Desire

The tale is set in Tuscany, in an abbey situated away from places much frequented by people. Its abbot is regarded as holy and just, and is careful enough in his dealings with women that almost no one knows or suspects his weakness. The narrator’s qualification punctures this public image: the abbot is devout in everything except the matter of women. His concealed desire therefore exists alongside, rather than instead of, the reputation that makes his later deception possible.

Ferondo, a wealthy farmer, has become very intimate with the abbot. He is described as heavy, dull-witted, and simple, and his company pleases the abbot partly because his foolishness affords him amusement. But Ferondo’s simplicity has a limit: he is shrewd in loving and guarding his beautiful wife. Once the abbot becomes passionately enamored of her, he sees that ordinary persuasion or access will not easily overcome her husband’s vigilance.

The wife explains the misery of her marriage when she comes to confess to the abbot. She says that, if God had given her a suitable husband—or no husband at all—she might follow the spiritual path he describes. Instead, she feels like a widow who is nevertheless still married: Ferondo’s lack of sense makes their life intolerable, while his jealousy prevents her from having another husband. Her confession presents the marriage as the obstacle to her spiritual well-being, and gives the abbot an opening to turn pastoral counsel toward his own desire.

A Promise and a Staged Death

The abbot first arranges occasions for Ferondo and his wife to visit the abbey garden. There, he speaks solemnly about eternal life and the pious deeds of men and women from earlier times. His performance of spiritual instruction encourages the wife to seek confession, but once she voices her marital distress, he persuades her that she should comply with his wishes. She agrees only on the condition that Ferondo first be sent to purgatory. The abbot answers that this can be managed at once and asks her to arrange for Ferondo to visit the abbey within a day or two. Before dismissing her, he secretly gives her a handsome ring; she leaves expecting further gifts and praises his sanctity to her companions.

A few days later, Ferondo comes to the abbey. The abbot has obtained a powder in the Levant from a great prince, who claimed it was the sort used by the Old Man of the Mountain to send people, sleeping, into or out of his paradise. In the tale’s account, the powder’s effect depends on the amount given: without harming the person, it can induce sleep for a longer or shorter time and leave the sleeper appearing lifeless while its virtue lasts. The abbot measures out enough to make Ferondo sleep for three days, puts it into a beaker of wine that is not yet well cleared, and gives it to him in his cell. Ferondo drinks without suspecting anything.

Afterward, the abbot and several monks make sport of Ferondo’s foolishness in the cloister. As the powder takes effect, Ferondo grows so suddenly and overwhelmingly drowsy that he falls asleep while still standing, then drops to the ground in a deep sleep. The shift from the monks’ mockery to apparent death makes the trick seem like an inexplicable bodily event rather than a deliberate act. The abbot then performs concern: he has Ferondo’s clothes loosened, calls for cold water to be thrown in his face, and tries other remedies as though some disorder had stolen away his life and senses. The monks feel his pulse, find no sign of life, and conclude that he is dead.

Burial, Removal, and the Hidden Prison

The abbot sends word to Ferondo’s wife and kinsfolk. She comes with her female relatives, mourns him for a while, and watches as he is laid in a tomb still dressed as he was. The public appearance of grief completes the deception: the monks’ diagnosis, the family’s mourning, and the burial all reinforce the false conclusion that Ferondo has died. His wife returns home and says that she will not part from the little son she had by her husband. She remains there, occupied with the child and the management of Ferondo’s wealth.

During the night, the abbot secretly returns to the tomb with the help of a trusted Bolognese monk who had arrived that day from Bologna. Together they take Ferondo out and carry him to a dark vault. The space is a prison made for monks who have committed some fault, but it now serves the abbot’s private scheme. They remove Ferondo’s clothes, dress him in the fashion of a monk, and lay him on a truss of straw. The Bolognese monk, instructed by the abbot and kept apart from the others’ knowledge, is left to wait for Ferondo to recover his senses. The burial thus becomes a transfer into concealed confinement: Ferondo has not passed into the afterlife, but has been hidden from his wife, his kin, and the community that believes him dead.

Consequences and Narrative Irony

The staging gives the abbot both concealment and access. On the following day he visits Ferondo’s wife, finds her dressed in black and grieving, comforts her, and privately reminds her of her promise. She agrees to receive him that night. Disguised in Ferondo’s clothes and accompanied by his confidant, the abbot returns to her house and lies with her; he repeats these visits afterward. The disguise extends the false death beyond the tomb: to villagers who sometimes encounter him, the figure going about the countryside appears to be Ferondo doing penance. Their reports become strange stories, and the wife hears them while knowing what is really happening.

The episode’s central irony is that the abbot’s public holiness helps him impersonate both spiritual authority and, in disguise, the supposedly dead husband. He invokes purgatory to secure the wife’s compliance, then turns a prison into the unseen counterpart of the grave. Against the wider work’s account of the 1348 plague—where contagion, failed remedies, and the abandonment of the sick make death frighteningly difficult to distinguish from survival—the abbot’s trick is a deliberately manufactured false death. The tale’s particular setting and timing are not specified as part of the plague narrative, but the contrast sharpens its concern with how appearances of death can be made, believed, and exploited.